A comment by President Joe Biden is encouraging airlines to hope that travel between the United States and Europe can be expanded in time for last-minute, late-summer holiday trips.
In a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Biden was asked about ending restrictions that prevent most European visitors from entering the United States.
Biden said on Thursday that a team advising him on the pandemic raised that topic. It is in the process of (considering) how soon we can lift the restrictions… and I’ll be able to answer that question for you over the next several days.
An official from the US Travel Association, a trade group for the broader tourism industry, praised Biden’s comments.
The science says we can now safely reopen international travel, especially for countries that have made great progress toward vaccinating their citizens,” said Tory Emerson Barnes, policy executive for the travel group Vice President, citing the study concluded that there is a low risk of transmitting the virus during flights. There are old restrictions on travel every day that inflict economic damage on our country.”
Airlines for America, a trade group representing major US carriers, said the time for action is now “to reopen to international visitors. The group noted that the US allows travel to and from Mexico.” , where less than a third of the population is vaccinated. , two countries with relatively high vaccination rates, severely restricting travel from Canada and the United Kingdom.
The rise and spread of COVID-19 variants in Europe, particularly the delta mutation that is also spreading across the US, has caused the Biden administration to go slowly about increasing transatlantic travel.
Last month, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the administration was eager to restore travel as fully and as quickly as possible, but said he could not put a date for reopening the country. “We have to be guided by science, by medical expertise.
Most of continental Europe has eased restrictions on Americans who are fully vaccinated, although the United Kingdom still requires quarantine for most visitors arriving on US airlines, however, due to the lack of two-way travel for those limiting the number of flights they can offer and seats they can sell.
In recent months, American airlines have introduced new service to European countries that are open to US visitors. Delta launched new or relaunched service to Greece, Iceland and Croatia, which opened early to vaccinated foreigners. In some cases, Americans who tested negative for the virus were able to skip the quarantine requirements that existed for other visitors.
Delta Air Lines CEO Ed Bastian said this week that bookings by Americans increased as those countries reopened and others followed suit.
The problem is that there are only Americans that we (in Europe) are taking in and taking out,” Bastian told the Associated Press.
He said most Europeans are unable to enter the US, forcing Delta to keep its transatlantic capacity at about half the level it was before the pandemic.
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David Koenig can be reached at www.twitter.com/airlinewriter
Disclaimer: This post has been self-published from the agency feed without modification and has not been reviewed by an editor
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